AxisMotionDetection

2012-07-31T15:15:32Z

Ocgltd:

I had this performance problem while monitoring and event recording for 8-10 IP cameras using the ZM.
ZM is too good a software to abandon just for performance issues. So I decided I should pay more attention to the motion detection feature of the cameras I have and relieve the ZM server from the task of detecting motion.
I've finally managed to use the on-camera motion detection feature of Axis Cams and here are my notes:

== Cameras ==

I've set my Axis camera as follows:

[[Image:AxisMDetect1.png]]
[[Image:AxisMDetect2.png]]

The text "1|on 5|5|cause|text|showtext" means that
alarm will be triggered for the monitor which has ID=1,
alarm will set recording on
alarm will be cleared after 5 seconds.
The score of the alarm is 5 ( any score >0 is OK)
"text" and "showtext" are just explanatory notes.

The ZM specs tells us that the format of the message can include a "duration" as long as the message is sent as:
"1|on+5|5|cause|text|showtext" bu the problem is the Axis camera cannot or will not save the "+" sign which appears in the message. A CGI parameter conversion problem I presume...

I've taken care of this "+" problem with a small modification in zmtrigger.pl source (see below).

Next, I specified the host IP address of the zm computer and its default zmtrigger port of 6802.

[[Image:AxisMDetect3.png]]
[[Image:AxisMDetect4.png]]

The second important setup is the "motion detection" setup on the Axis. I created a window which covers the area of interest; kept the object size as small as possible, pulled the history slider all the way back to zero and left the sensitivity slide somewhere past the %50 value.

== ZM settings ==

There is no special setting for the ZM except that I've assigned the "Nodect" function to my camera monitor.

[[Image:AxisMDetect5.png]]

Finally, I modified the zmtrigger.pl file so that the first few lines of the
function handleMessage looks like this:

Code:
sub handleMessage{
my $connection = shift;
my $message = shift;
#
# CUA - Axis camera send the message quoted with"
# CUA - Also Axis camera cannot save the plus sign which
# CUA - possibly exists in the 1|on+20|score|cause|text|showtext formatted msg

$message=~ s/^\"//g;
$message=~ s/\"$//g;
$message=~ s/on /on\+/;

# CUA - end of modifications

my ( $id, $action, $score, $cause, $text, $showtext ) = split( /\|/, $message );

a few other modifications I made in the zmtrigger.pl file are commenting out some unused modules and pushes:

Code:
use ZoneMinder::Trigger::Channel::Inet;
#CUA use ZoneMinder::Trigger::Channel::Unix;
#CUA use ZoneMinder::Trigger::Channel::Serial;
use ZoneMinder::Trigger::Connection;

my @connections;
push( @connections, ZoneMinder::Trigger::Connection->new( name=>"Chan1", channel=>ZoneMinder::Trigger::Channel::Inet->new( port=>6802 ), mode=>"rw" ) );
#CUA push( @connections, ZoneMinder::Trigger::Connection->new( name=>"Chan2", channel=>ZoneMinder::Trigger::Channel::Unix->new( path=>'/tmp/test.sock' ), mode=>"rw" ) );
#push( @connections, ZoneMinder::Trigger::Connection->new( name=>"Chan3", channel=>ZoneMinder::Trigger::Channel::File->new( path=>'/tmp/zmtrigger.out' ), mode=>"w" ) );
#CUA push( @connections, ZoneMinder::Trigger::Connection->new( name=>"Chan4", channel=>ZoneMinder::Trigger::Channel::Serial->new( path=>'/dev/ttyS0' ), mode=>"rw" ) );

my modifs are marked with "# CUA"

These three regular expressions remove the quotes sent by Axis which envelope the message string and insert a plus sign if the "on" command is followed by a space). These 3 statements convert an incoming message of the form

Code:
"1|on 25|5|cause|text|showtext"

to

Code:
1|on+25|5|cause|text|showtext

and of course, you shouln"t forget to restart zmtrigger.pl; or better still modify the zm startup script so that it starts zmtrigger.pl everytime zm is [re]started.

Note: If you plan to use the zmxap interface (to connect ZoneMinder to MisterHouse using xAP), your cause must be "Motion" (without quotes), and your text must be a single word (no spaces); eg: LAWN. In Misterhouse, the camera name will be the MONITOR name (eg: FRONT_DOOR), and the zone name will be the text (eg: LAWN). If you don't follow this convention then MisterHouse will not respond to the xAP event messages properly.

I added the line '/usr/bin/zmtrigger.pl &" in the start section of
/etc/init.d/zoneminder and also added the line "pkill zmtrigger.pl" in the stop section.

Code:

start() {
echo -n "Starting $prog: "
$command start
# CUA
/usr/bin/zmtrigger.pl &

RETVAL=$?
[ $RETVAL = 0 ] && echo success
[ $RETVAL != 0 ] && echo failure
echo
[ $RETVAL = 0 ] && touch /var/lock/zm
return $RETVAL
}
stop() {
echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
#
# Why is this status check being done?
# as $command stop returns 1 if zoneminder
# is stopped, which will result in
# this returning 1, which will stuff
# dpkg when it tries to stop zoneminder before
# uninstalling . . .
#
# CUA
pkill zmtrigger.pl

I just hope that this helps other people trying to implement the on-camera motion detection with ZM.

Again; many thanks to those people who developed ZM at the first place and to those who helped it to become a perfect opensource project.

[http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10872 Original Thread]

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Copied By: KingOfKYA

Created By: cayfer

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AxisMotionDetection